The Solitary Messengers

23:2.1Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are not per­ma­nently at­tached to any in­di­vid­ual or group of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties. They are on duty, al­ways by as­sign­ment, and dur­ing such ser­vice they work un­der the im­me­di­ate super­vi­sion of those who di­rect the realms of their at­tach­ment. Among them­selves they have nei­ther or­ga­ni­za­tion nor gov­ern­ment of any kind; they are Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers.

23:2.2Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are as­signed by the In­fi­nite Spirit to the fol­low­ing seven di­vi­sions of ser­vice:

23:2.31. Mes­sen­gers of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

23:2.42. Mes­sen­gers of the Ha­vona Cir­cuits.

23:2.53. Mes­sen­gers of the Super­uni­verses.

23:2.64. Mes­sen­gers of the Lo­cal Uni­verses.

23:2.75. Ex­plor­ers of Undi­rected As­sign­ment.

23:2.86. Am­bas­sadors and Emis­saries of Spe­cial As­sign­ment.

23:2.97. Rev­e­la­tors of Truth.

23:2.10These spirit mes­sen­gers are in ev­ery sense in­ter­change­able from one type of ser­vice to an­other; such trans­fers are con­stantly tak­ing place. There are no sep­a­rate or­ders of Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers; they are spir­i­tu­ally alike and in ev­ery sense equal. While they are gen­er­ally des­ig­nated by num­ber, they are known to the In­fi­nite Spirit by per­sonal names. They are known to the rest of us by the name or num­ber des­ig­na­tive of their cur­rent as­sign­ment.

23:2.111. Mes­sen­gers of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. I am not per­mit­ted to re­veal much of the work of the group of mes­sen­gers as­signed to the Trin­ity. They are the trusted and se­cret ser­vants of the De­i­ties, and when in­trusted with spe­cial mes­sages which in­volve the un­re­vealed poli­cies and fu­ture con­duct of the Gods, they have never been known to di­vulge a se­cret or be­tray the con­fi­dence re­posed in their or­der. And all this is re­lated in this con­nec­tion, not to ap­pear boast­ful of their per­fec­tion, but rather to point out that the De­i­ties can and do cre­ate per­fect be­ings.

23:2.12The con­fu­sion and tur­moil of Uran­tia do not sig­nify that the Par­a­dise Rulers lack ei­ther in­ter­est or abil­ity to man­age af­fairs dif­fer­ently. The Cre­ators are pos­sessed of full power to make Uran­tia a ver­i­ta­ble par­a­dise, but such an Eden would not con­tribute to the de­vel­op­ment of those strong, no­ble, and ex­pe­ri­enced char­ac­ters which the Gods are so surely forg­ing out on your world be­tween the anvils of ne­ces­sity and the ham­mers of an­guish. Your anx­i­eties and sor­rows, your tri­als and dis­ap­point­ments, are just as much a part of the di­vine plan on your sphere as are the ex­qui­site per­fec­tion and in­fi­nite adap­ta­tion of all things to their su­preme pur­pose on the worlds of the cen­tral and per­fect uni­verse.

23:2.132. Mes­sen­gers of the Ha­vona Cir­cuits. Through­out the as­cen­dant ca­reer you will be vaguely, but in­creas­ingly, able to de­tect the pres­ence of the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers, but not un­til you reach Ha­vona will you rec­og­nize them un­mis­tak­ably. The first of the mes­sen­gers you will see face to face will be those of the Ha­vona cir­cuits.

23:2.14Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers en­joy spe­cial re­la­tions with the na­tives of the Ha­vona worlds. These mes­sen­gers, who are so func­tion­ally hand­i­capped when as­so­ci­at­ing with one an­other, can and do have a very close and per­sonal com­mu­nion with the Ha­vona na­tives. But it is quite im­pos­si­ble to con­vey to hu­man minds the su­preme sat­is­fac­tions con­se­quent upon the con­tact of the minds of these di­vinely per­fect be­ings with the spir­its of such near-tran­scen­dent per­son­al­i­ties.

23:2.153. Mes­sen­gers of the Super­uni­verses. The An­cients of Days, those per­son­al­i­ties of Trin­ity ori­gin who pre­side over the des­tinies of the seven super­uni­verses, those trios of di­vine power and ad­min­is­tra­tive wis­dom, are boun­ti­fully sup­plied with Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers. It is only through this or­der of mes­sen­gers that the tri­une rulers of one super­uni­verse can di­rectly and per­son­ally com­mu­ni­cate with the rulers of an­other. Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are the only avail­able type of spirit in­tel­li­gence—aside, pos­si­bly, from the In­spired Trin­ity Spir­its—that can be dis­patched from the head­quar­ters of one super­uni­verse di­rectly to the head­quar­ters of an­other. All other per­son­al­i­ties must make such ex­cur­sions by way of Ha­vona and the ex­ec­u­tive worlds of the Mas­ter Spir­its.

23:2.16There are some kinds of in­for­ma­tion which can­not be ob­tained ei­ther by Grav­ity Mes­sen­gers, re­flec­tiv­ity, or broad­cast. And when the An­cients of Days would cer­tainly know these things, they must dis­patch a Soli­tary Mes­sen­ger to the source of knowl­edge. Long be­fore the pres­ence of life on Uran­tia the mes­sen­ger now as­so­ci­ated with me was as­signed on a mis­sion out of Uversa to the cen­tral uni­verse—was ab­sent from the roll calls of Or­von­ton for al­most a mil­lion years but re­turned in due time with the de­sired in­for­ma­tion.

23:2.17There is no lim­i­ta­tion upon the ser­vice of Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers in the super­uni­verses; they may func­tion as ex­e­cu­tion­ers of the high tri­bu­nals or as in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ers for the good of the realm. Of all the super­cre­ations they most de­light to serve in Or­von­ton be­cause here the need is great­est and the op­por­tu­ni­ties for heroic ef­fort are greatly mul­ti­plied. In the more needy realms we all en­joy the sat­is­fac­tion of a more re­plete func­tion.

23:2.184. Mes­sen­gers of the Lo­cal Uni­verses. In the ser­vices of a lo­cal uni­verse there is no limit upon the func­tion­ing of the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers. They are the faith­ful re­veal­ers of the mo­tives and in­tent of the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit, al­though they are un­der the full ju­ris­dic­tion of the reign­ing Mas­ter Son. And this is true of all mes­sen­gers op­er­at­ing in a lo­cal uni­verse, whether they are trav­el­ing out di­rectly from uni­verse head­quar­ters, or whether they are act­ing tem­porar­ily in li­ai­son with Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers, Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns, or Plan­e­tary Princes. Be­fore the con­cen­tra­tion of all power in the hands of a Cre­ator Son at the time of his el­e­va­tion as sov­er­eign ruler of his uni­verse, these mes­sen­gers of the lo­cal uni­verses func­tion un­der the gen­eral di­rec­tion of the An­cients of Days and are im­me­di­ately re­spon­si­ble to their res­i­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive, the Union of Days.

23:2.195. Ex­plor­ers of Undi­rected As­sign­ment. When the re­serve corps of the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers is over­recruited, there is­sues from one of the Seven Su­preme Power Di­rec­tors a call for ex­plo­ration vol­un­teers; and there is never a lack of vol­un­teers, for they de­light to be dis­patched as free and un­tram­meled ex­plor­ers, to ex­pe­ri­ence the thrill of find­ing the or­ga­niz­ing nu­cle­uses of new worlds and uni­verses.

23:2.20They go forth to in­ves­ti­gate the clues fur­nished by the space con­tem­pla­tors of the realms. Un­doubt­edly the Par­a­dise De­i­ties know of the ex­is­tence of these undis­cov­ered en­ergy sys­tems of space, but they never di­vulge such in­for­ma­tion. If the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers did not ex­plore and chart these newly or­ga­niz­ing en­ergy cen­ters, such phe­nom­ena would long re­main un­no­ticed even by the in­tel­li­gences of ad­ja­cent realms. Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers, as a class, are highly sen­si­tive to grav­ity; ac­cord­ingly they can some­times de­tect the prob­a­ble pres­ence of very small dark plan­ets, the very worlds which are best adapted to life ex­per­i­ments.

23:2.21These mes­sen­ger-ex­plor­ers of undi­rected as­sign­ment pa­trol the mas­ter uni­verse. They are con­stantly out on ex­plor­ing ex­pe­di­tions to the un­charted re­gions of all outer space. Very much of the in­for­ma­tion which we pos­sess of trans­ac­tions in the realms of outer space, we owe to the ex­plo­rations of the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers as they of­ten work and study with the ce­les­tial as­tron­o­mers.

23:2.226. Am­bas­sadors and Emis­saries of Spe­cial As­sign­ment. Lo­cal uni­verses sit­u­ated within the same super­uni­verse cus­tom­ar­ily ex­change am­bas­sadors se­lected from their na­tive or­ders of son­ship. But to avoid de­lay, Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers are fre­quently asked to go as am­bas­sadors from one lo­cal cre­ation to an­other, to rep­re­sent and in­ter­pret one realm to an­other. For ex­am­ple: When a newly in­hab­ited realm is dis­cov­ered, it may prove to be so re­mote in space that a long time will pass be­fore an en­ser­a­phimed am­bas­sador can reach this far-dis­tant uni­verse. An en­ser­a­phimed be­ing can­not pos­si­bly ex­ceed the ve­loc­ity of 558,840 Uran­tia miles in one sec­ond of your time. Mas­sive stars, cross­cur­rents, and de­tours, as well as at­trac­tion tan­gents, will all tend to re­tard such speed so that on a long jour­ney the ve­loc­ity will av­er­age about 550,000 miles per sec­ond.

23:2.23When it de­vel­ops that it will re­quire hun­dreds of years for a na­tive am­bas­sador to reach a far-dis­tant lo­cal uni­verse, a Soli­tary Mes­sen­ger is of­ten asked to pro­ceed there im­me­di­ately to act as am­bas­sador ad in­terim. Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers can go in very short or­der, not in­de­pen­dently of time and space as do the Grav­ity Mes­sen­gers, but nearly so. They also serve in other cir­cum­stances as emis­saries of spe­cial as­sign­ment.

23:2.247. Rev­e­la­tors of Truth. The Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers re­gard the as­sign­ment to re­veal truth as the high­est trust of their or­der. And they func­tion ever and anon in this ca­pac­ity, from the super­uni­verses to the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets of space. They are fre­quently at­tached to com­mis­sions which are sent to en­large the rev­e­la­tion of truth to the worlds and sys­tems.